The Long Way Back Read online

  I stared at her, drawn in by the aura of pain surrounding her. She was trapped in it, like me and Fuad on that awful day, and I could feel Fuad, almost see him all around us, binding us together.

  That evening back in the autumn, Fuad’s eyes had been glowing like dying embers. He had been trembling in spite of the warm weather and infecting me with the anxiety that he transmitted even just by moving his fingertips or lips slightly, or glancing sideways. He never used to reveal his inner thoughts or feelings to me when we met those evenings last autumn; I often watched him silhouetted against the sunset and the anemic sky, on the terrace of the Café Belkis down by the river, and there was the same unfathomable look in his eyes as there was in hers now.

  She was talking to me uneasily, asking me about my illness, my exam, what I’d been reading, what was really wrong with me, and I wasn’t listening properly I could feel my forehead damp with fever. I smiled at her, and she responded with the ghost of a smile, excusing my lack of good humor. I was not the person she thought I was: she was ignorant of much that had happened to me during these past few months, although the fact that I had been ill was no secret. I lived my illness conscientiously because I couldn’t think of any alternative, and it was what brought us close to each other. Illness united us. Mine and hers. They suddenly got up to go, cutting short the brief moments when she had lit up my room with her presence, all because of my mother who had apparently noticed that I was exhausted.

  Munira hung behind briefly. She stood at the door, her face turned towards me. Her brown skin was pale, and all I could make out of her features was her gold-flecked eyes. She said in a serious voice that she hoped everything would work out. Her abaya revealed the swell of her left breast, and from the waves of despair in her voice I realized she was talking about herself as well.

  The room was strangely empty after they’d gone. I lay on my bed wondering not for the first time why I was ill like this. I longed to follow them out-of the gray shadows where they had abandoned me and become one of them. The sight of her made me want to be a healthy outdoor type, and yet I was incapable even of getting up to switch on the light!

  From my tall window I could see a piece of the sky, white and soft against the light blue, and below it the neighbors’ dark, depressing walls. I got up slowly and walked and stood in the doorway. I wasn’t as weak as I had imagined, so I ought to accept the illness as it really was: no exaggerating it and no adolescent pretending it didn’t exist. The sky opened out above me, and the sight of it made me feel calm. They weren’t in the alcove, and I heard their voices coming from my Aunt Safiya’s room. They were talking with a liveliness that they hadn’t shown when they were with me. They were more aware of my illness than I was myself. They experienced it at a profound level sometimes, my mother especially, but their fellow feeling didn’t move me, although it should have done.

  Suha came running out of my aunt’s room and noticed me standing there. She looked slightly taken aback, then her face lit up and she began telling me enthusiastically how they’d all decided to go up on the terrace to sleep from tonight on. She was like a little bird, twittering with excitement. Since Munira and her mother had arrived I’d expected the family to move up there, as it wasn’t easy to find suitable accommodation for two extra people. I felt as pleased at the idea of the move to the roof as if I’d been going to join them myself, but then I had a dizzy spell which forced me back into bed where I became immersed in my own thoughts again.

  The police officer took two or three steps forward and came to a halt a short distance from the chair where I was sitting, bound hand and foot. He stood like a peacock, his eyes blazing. Sometimes he was a Gestapo officer, sometimes an interrogator from the Spanish Inquisition. He began to address me, fixing me in the eye: “I have to inform you that it is my duty to arrest you on charges of murder, desertion, and treason.”

  Then he gave a Nazi salute that frightened me more than what he had just said. My limbs were numb and stiff, and the sweat was pouring off me. I wasn’t really tied to the chair, but I might as well have been.

  “You’d do well to understand,” he began again, “that my duty as an honest official and a citizen obliges me to arrest all those accused of murder, desertion, and treason. What do you think we’re in this world for?”

  Another strange salute. Then for the third time: “Don’t allow yourself to think about anything but your arrest for murder, desertion, and treason.”

  He wore a little round badge on his chest, which he insisted on pointing out to me when he finished speaking. This time there was no salute. The image on the badge zoomed towards me, and I saw it in close-up. It was only then I began shouting. The picture was a jumble of lines, like ant-tracks in the dust, but from it a clear image emerged: Fuad’s face in the last few moments of his life.

  I felt like shouting and weeping to exorcise my anguish in the first light of dawn. I sat up in bed staring into space. I was bathed in cold, sticky sweat, and my breathing was rapid and uneven, constricting my chest. I wiped my sweat with the cloth my mother had left by the bed, then stood up and went towards the door, my limbs trembling. The cold air of daybreak revived me slightly, and I made slowly for the fridge in the alcove. I drank some icy water and splashed the remains of the glass over my face. The world was as quiet as an open grave. There was nobody about but me. I held on to the wooden balustrade and rested my weight on it. Why did these dreadful things happen to me? I wanted to be ill and get better like normal people did. But it wasn’t the illness that was eating at me: it was an idea, an obsession, a devil on my back. I returned to my room feeling drained and empty and lay down on the bed. Through the open door I could see the sky glistening like the waters of a stream. The sun wouldn’t be up for an hour or more. I’d been on my own like this for a while now. I couldn’t remember how long, and if time had no meaning in such situations, then surely I was destined to end up like this, neither guilty not innocent. No one but me would ever know what had happened to me. and perhaps I was the only one who could look for a solution. If I continued to be afraid of pain, sorrow, guilt, remorse—the specters which haunted my nights and often my days too—then I would be actively inviting a harsh judgment on my behavior.

  The surface of the sky grew brighter. If only the hidden corners of the soul could be lit up in the same way! I decided Munira wasn’t like Fuad. There was no physical resemblance. But spiritually, in the aura that surrounded them both . . . Fuad was walking parallel to the curb, thin and upright, apart from the slightly hunched shoulders and an unsureness in his steps. The yellow light defined him from all angles. That particular night we had left earlier than usual. The big house had been empty. I’d believed for a short while, after I saw the object of his affections coming out of the room and gesturing to me in a way which I took to mean that things had gone normally at last, that he would now find something approaching peace of mind. I saw his face as soon as he came through the door. It was blotchy and very pale, and his blazing eyes had gone empty and dead. He propelled me along in a rush, not wanting to see her, and his fingers felt cold and clammy and limp. He went out ahead of me and took a few steps along the street, then leaned against the fence of the next door house. I went up to him anxiously, thinking he was about to throw up, but he wouldn’t have had the strength. His entire body was trembling. Without a word I put my arm round him and he was still, like a dying sparrow, and my heart was sore for him as I held him. I said nothing, although I didn’t understand what was going on. The moments passed like long years of torment, and we were two old men approaching death. I saw him close his eyes, then he let out a sigh that was more of a sob and moved away from me along the edge of the curb. This was the picture of him I would preserve for the rest of my life. He wasn’t dead then. He was like a flower in full bloom covered with the early morning dew. No one would benefit from him ceasing to exist. He was a bright star in the surrounding darkness, and I could only be true to myself if I saved him from extinction. From now on thi
s would be my reason for living.

  I was almost calm as I lay there on my bed listening to the first chirpings of the birds in the barren olive tree. I realized that the lame way I was solving my problem—if indeed I was—by forcibly holding myself apart from everything, trying to remain immobilized inside time on a sick-bed, couldn’t be sustained for much longer. So much mental activity in one day, before the sun had even risen!

  These reflections were interrupted by the sounds of someone coming down from the roof. The lightness of the tread made me think it must be my mother. She always walked softly like that, as if she was scared of hurting the feelings of the ground beneath her feet. Was she an infinite source of love? Perhaps it was anxiety about me that had woken her up so early in the morning. Since the door leading to the stairs was opposite my room, I was expecting to see her at any moment, as soon as she’d crossed the gallery separating us. It was only a few minutes to sunrise, and the crystal sky bathed the courtyard and gallery and old wall in a soft flood of light.

  The moment the figure emerged through the door at the bottom of the stairs leading to the roof, I saw it was her, treading slowly, light as a bird, then stopping to lean against the balustrade. She looked thin in her long blue dress. Her shoulder blades stuck out, and part of her neck and chest showed pure white. Both hands were resting on the railing, and she was looking down. The moments that followed were magical for me, immeasurably beautiful. I was surprised and enthralled to see her in such a way and at such a time. She wasn’t Munira, my cousin, but an explosion of light in my confused life. She was my sorrow, my painful past, my love, my longing, my sickness and misery. She stood there without moving and looked unearthly, ethereal. She raised her hand to push a strand of her long hair back off her forehead. Then as she turned her gaze slowly to look round the house, her eyes brushed past my room, and I was seized with horror at the idea of her seeing me. My presence, or even the sight of me, might sully her, bring her down to the level of ordinary mortals. She was at worship, contemplating her soul and something heavenly to which I had no access. I felt insignificant as I watched her finish this dawn prayer of hers, then glide like a phantom towards my aunt’s room.

  After she’d gone I felt tired, and it didn’t occur to me to go out and speak to her. A cool breeze caressed my hot face and I closed my eyes. Maybe I was feverish, about to have a relapse, but unfamiliar emotions were raging inside me, making me uneasy. I was reliving the whole painful episode. I hadn’t lost Fuad; he was still part of my world. not had I betrayed him, not for a single instant. He was alive in some way in this creature of uncertain dimensions whom I hardly knew. From my dark night he was drawing me towards him.

  That autumn evening his eyes had been ablaze as he sat facing me at the dirty, dusty table up on the terrace of the Belkis, where we’d gone to avoid the dull company inside. I’d watched him trembling with emotion, which wasn’t like him, and it had alarmed me. He wasn’t given to impetuosity I was used to his deliberation and careful reasoning, but from what he told me he had been swept off his feet without realizing what was happening. She was the daughter of some neighbors who’d lived in a shabby building near their large family house for a couple of months, then moved away They were the sort of people whose past mistakes hound them all their lives. Her mother was on her own, and people said her father was a British officer who’d fallen in love with her mother, a beautiful Bedouin woman, married her, had a boy and a girl with her, then gone off with his regiment. Shed received a few letters, then nothing mote was ever heard of him. As the son wasn’t able to give the family security, the mother had to do what she could to support them all.

  Fuad had been seventeen at that time, and the girl no more than fifteen. A boy’s love, but it had lasted. He only talked to me about her after a lot of hesitation. It was hard for him, even embarrassing in a way. He’d never said a word to her, had no desire to, but had kept track of them for the whole four years after they’d left the neighborhood. She was everything to him, a symbol of life and the world as he dreamed they could be. She knew nothing of him, and that, too, was as he wanted it to be. Involuntarily, she had purified him by her presence inside him and kindled a flame in him that would never die. He would have liked to reject the categories bequeathed to him by his forefathers, which delineated the beginnings and endings in life. Then he would have come to a halt at the peak of his burning love for her and not done anything with her, so preserving his feelings intact, undiminished, for the rest of his life. He suffered continuously because what he was going through didn’t seem normal or right. He wanted to write to her, talk to her, marry her! Then he thought it would be more logical and in keeping with his views of life if he forgot all about her. It was pointless to follow her about like this, keeping watch on each successive house the family moved to, and observing her as she came and went. Their paths were clearly never going to coincide.

  On this particular evening he was silent and buried his face in his hands. I watched the red sky fill up with dark clouds scudding southwards and didn’t dare break the silence. I was helpless, unable to comprehend. He had told me before that he’d lost all trace of her for more than a year and felt anxious about her without knowing why. It was as if she was heading for disaster, and it was just a case of finding out when and how it would happen. Suddenly, without removing his hands from in front of his face, he said he’d seen her by chance in a brothel.

  I took hold of his hands and pulled them away from his face. I needed to see his eyes to know if he was telling the truth. They were red and wet with tears. He looked away from me and squeezed my fingers. With him sitting beside me and the sky overcast and the smell of the river on the cool autumn breeze, I sensed a whiff of tragedy in the air. There was no emotion, no hint of tears in his voice, as he recounted how he’d seen her and sat watching her for an hour without the strength to move. She hadn’t paid him any particular attention. He reminded himself that he’d chosen in one way or another not to get involved in her life and realized he had to get out. Sitting watching her was sheer hell. He didn’t have the courage to go back and see her on his own, and the nights of anguish and heartbreak were becoming more than he could stand. I realized from the way he looked at me, from the dark circles under his eyes, which were tired despite the passion in them, from his silence and his hands lying resignedly on the table between us, that he was appealing to me to share these difficult times with him. I never thought for a moment that a thing called death was awaiting us, and so with a light heart I patted his hot hand and asked when would be a good time for us to go.

  We entered the hall of the big house and, as we sat waiting for her, I became convinced he must have resolved his feelings and abandoned his past illusions about love and all the rest of it. She was terribly thin and moved heavily There was nothing attractive about her face except for her eyes, which had very black lashes. She sat down beside us. I was examining her, trying to fathom the mystery of the strange sort of purity that enveloped her and pervaded her features and gestures, when I noticed the sound of Fuad’s rapid breathing. His pale face, turned towards her, wore a deeply tormented expression, and he clasped and unclasped his hands. She arranged her short black hair and didn’t look at anyone. The arteries in his neck throbbed violently as he breathed. The two of them were obviously going nowhere together, and I began to think that perhaps I’d been influenced by what he had said and by my genuine feelings of friendship toward him when I had momentarily sensed a certain purity in her. I only existed on the fringes of their tragedy, and it would have been easy for me to say that she was an insipid girl without much to her. It wouldn’t have done me any harm, and I could then have searched dispassionately for a way of sorting things out for Fuad. But that night was too short; we were prevented from taking stock because some idiotic punter beckoned her and we had to leave.

  That was the start of the vicious circle: days of talking, when Fuad gave vent to his apprehensions and anxieties, then night time visits cut short by unnece
ssarily hasty exits. I can’t say I was ever bored, but I began to share in his helplessness and embarrassment, and sometimes his fear. In the end a deadly feeling of futility and shame began to creep over me. That particular night I had wanted to speak out but hadn’t had the courage. She was wearing a light green dress, and all her gestures and glances had a lightness about them. For a moment I thought she was treating us lightly with contempt, and I had it in mind to say something to her. Perhaps it would have been a reproach or an invitation, but in the event I said nothing. I watched him gently take her hand and go off with her, and I’ll never forget the quick look he gave me as he disappeared into the room with her. Was it possible that he had had an inkling of what could so easily have happened between me and her?